Dead Men Tell No Tales
by Anonymous Zen
Summary: Directly after Mr. Norrignton finds himself discharged from the Navy he boards a vessel bound for New Amsterdam. Unfortunately for him, the fates find it amusing to dash him against the rocks of misfortune. a little romance, between who? no spoilers
1. Chapter 1

**DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES**

**CHAPTER I. LOVE ON THE OCEAN **

Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, except falling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when the wooden clippers did finely to land you in Port Royal or in New Amsterdam under the four full months. The passengers saw far too much of each other, unless, indeed, they were to see still more. Their superficial attractions mutually exhausted, they lost heart and patience in the disappointing strata which lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. Among the passengers, James Norrington suffered a loss of his naval commission, after a most tragic altercation with a notorious pirate and an unloving fiancé, and had quitted the city of Port Royal. It was no common experience, as was only too well known and remarked upon by all the citizens of the city. Norrington, for his part, had not the faintest intention of falling in love on board; nay, after all the years he wasted loving Elizabeth and his heart had been left as a wind blasted wreck, coarse and sun bleached. Yet the ship carried a young lady, on her way to New Amsterdam, who might have made short work of many a softer heart.

Eva Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteen years of age. Norrington's own name was still unknown to her, and yet he found himself quite fascinated by her frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yet ludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chiefly abroad, and, as he was soon to discover, possessed accomplishments which would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on board ship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with the bloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovely hair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drowned her ears in sunny ripples; and a soul greater than the mind, and a heart greater than either, lay sleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.

It was in the brave old days of the East India Trading Company, when ship after ship went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce home with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsails in a gale. Norrington had decided over night that he had suffered enough of the scorn of his former acquaintances and wandered dejectedly toward the docks. There was, however, one slice of luck in store for him. He found the dear old _Lady Jermyn_ on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a new crew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargo at all. He felt none the less at home when he stepped over her familiar side of a ship at sea.

In the cuddy there were only five, but a more uneven quintet I defy you to convene. There was a young fellow named Wormfud, packed out for his health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was an outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothing but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and had been seen to pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. Miss Denison was the only lady, and her step-father, with whom she was travelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portuguese of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it was incredible to Norrington that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; but very soon he realized that Santos was one of those to whom adventitious honors can add no luster. He treated Miss Denison as no parent ever treated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful to watch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances under which they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight from school to her step-father's estate on the Zambezi, where, a few months later, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the place after his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to the Caribbean, there to seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as Norrington's own. He was now taking Miss Denison back to England, by way of the colonies, to make her home with other relatives, before he himself returned to Africa to lay his bones beside those of his wife.

No need to say that Norrington came more in contact with the young girl. She was not less charming in his eyes because she provoked him greatly as he came to know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most young persons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant in nearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crude way. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a style that made their shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of their order; but Norrington had seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folks who were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directions where her superiority was less specific. The faults which are most exasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and Norrington was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. He felt so certain that the girl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heights in stress or storm: all the more would he long to take her in hand and mould her in little things, and anon to take her in his arms just as she was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, he had endured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and, not being a complete coxcomb, he had no intention of courting a second.

So it is that at the close of that last concert on the quarter-deck, the watch took down the extra awning; they removed the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns were trailed forward before they were put out; from the break of the poop they watched the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lit up on its way. The stars were very sharp in the vast violet dome above their masts; they shimmered on the sea; and the trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for the trades have yet to fail them, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods upon His waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voice hummed a song of Eva Denison's that had caught the fancy of the men; the young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty minutes since who sang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with their little world she alone would head a mutiny if she could.

"I hate the captain!" she says again.

"My dear Miss Denison!" Norrington begins; for she has always been severe upon the bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makes Norrington invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom the owners would have chosen to command the _Lady_ _Jermyn_; a good seaman none the less, who brought them through foul weather without losing stitch or stick. Norrington thinks of the ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins, on deck day and night for their sakes, and once more he must needs take his part; but Miss Denison stops him before he can get out another word.

"I am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only a school-girl—you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were a man—if I were you—I should tell Captain Harris what I thought of him!"

"Why? What has he done now?"

"Now? You know how rude he was to poor Mr. Wormfud this very afternoon!"

It was true. He had been very rude indeed. But Wormfud also had been at fault. It may be that Norrignton was always inclined to take an opposite view, but he felt bound to point this out, and at any cost.

"You mean when Wormfud asked him if we were out of our course? I must say I thought it was a silly question to put. Any sailor worth half his weight in salt can tell by the stars that we have drifted no less than fifteen leagues off course. It was the same the other evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast, which we are not, it does us no good to constantly question him. Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. I wasn't surprised at his letting out."

Eva stares at Norrington in the starlight. Her great eyes flash their scorn. Then she gives a little smile—and then a little nod—more scornful than all the rest.

"You never are surprised, are you, Mr. Norrington?" says she. "You were not surprised when the wretch used horrible language in front of me! You were not surprised when it was a—dying man—whom he abused!"

He tries to soothe her. He agrees heartily with her disgust at the epithets employed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper. But Norrington also asks her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated man, rather clumsily touched upon his tender spot. Norrington shall conciliate her presently; the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; the starlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty evening dress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete flounces; and he is watching her, ay, and worshipping her, though he does not know it yet. And as they stand there comes another snatch from the forecastle:—

"What will you do, love, when I am going.

With white sail flowing,

The seas beyond?

What will you do, love—"

"They may make the most of that song," says Miss Denison grimly; "it's the last they'll have from me. Get up as many more concerts as you like. I won't sing at another unless it's in the fo'c'sle. I'll sing to the men, but not to Captain Harris. He didn't put in an appearance tonight. He shall not have another chance of insulting me."

Was it her vanity that was wounded after all? "You forget," said Norrington, "that you would not answer when he addressed you at dinner."

"I should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Wormfud; and he too agitated to come to table, poor fellow!"

"Still, the captain felt the open slight."

"Then he shouldn't have used such language in front of me."

"Your father felt it, too, Miss Denison."

"Mr. Norrington, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before I can remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizes with Captain Harris—against me; no father would do that. Look at them together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with any of you—except poor Mr. Wormfud in his berth."

"But you are not going."

"Indeed I am. I am tired of you all."

And she was gone with angry tears for which Norrington blamed himself as he fell to pacing the weather side of the poop. Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail. Norrington fancied poor old Harris eyed him with suspicion, and Norrington wished he had better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted Norrington with his customary courtesy, and there seemed to be a grave twinkle in his steady eye.

"Are you in deesgrace also, friend Norrington?" he inquired in his all but perfect English.

"More or less," said Norrington ruefully.

He gave the shrug of his country—that delicate gesture which is done almost entirely with the back—a subtlety beyond the power of British shoulders.

"The senhora is both weelful and pivish," said he, mixing the two vowels which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with the British tongue. "It is great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her sainted mother!"

He sighed, and Norrington saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glow fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaid in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice home to Norrington in the same moment, though, to be sure, he had often been struck by it before. And it depressed him to think that so sweet a child as Eva Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old salt like Captain Harris.

Norrington turned in, alas; he was a heavy sleeper then.

**CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO **

"Wake up, Norrington! The ship's on fire!"

It was young Wormfud's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were saying he was late for breakfast. Norrington started up and sought him wildly in the darkness.

"You're joking," was his first thought and utterance; for now Wormfud was lighting a candle, and blowing out the match with a care that seemed in itself a contradiction.

"I wish I were," he answered. "Listen to that!"

He pointed to the cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at once Norrington was as a deaf man healed.

One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes him how even he could have slept an instant in the abnormal din which he now heard raging above his head. Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered; men bawled; women shrieked; shouts of terror drowned the roar of command.

"Have we long to last?" he asked, as he leaped for his clothes.

"Long enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's only just been discovered; they may get it under. The panic's the worst part at present, and we're out of that."

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly he put the question; the answer was reassuring. Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop. "And both of 'em as cool as cucumbers," added Wormfud.

They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; but until this moment the athlete had been to Norrington a mere and incredible tradition. In the afternoon he had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire. Now, at midnight, it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of it in the mirror.

"By Jove!" said he, "this has put me in a fine old fever; but I don't know when I felt in better fettle. If only they get it under! I've not looked like this all the voyage."

And he admired himself while Norrignton dressed in hot haste: a fine young fellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by the doctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin. It revived one's confidence to hear him talk. But he forgot himself in an instant, and gave Norrington a lead through the saloon with a boyish eagerness that made Norrington actually suspicious as he ran. It was only when they plunged upon the crowded quarter-deck, and his own eyes read lust of life and dread of death in the starting eyes of others, that such lust and such dread threatened to consume him in turn, so that his veins seemed filled with fire and ice.

The first wild panic was subsiding even then; at least there was a lull, and even a reaction in the right direction on the part of the males in the second class and steerage. A huge Irishman at their head, they were passing buckets towards the after-hold; the press of people hid the hatchway from sight until Norrington gained the poop; but he heard the buckets spitting and a hose-pipe hissing into the flames below; and he saw the column of white vapor rising steadily from their midst.

At the break of the poop stood Captain Harris, his legs planted wide apart, very vigorous, very decisive, very profane. But the night was as beautiful as it had been an hour or two back; the stars as brilliant, the breeze even more balmy, the sea even more calm; and the ship was hove-to already, against the worst.

In this hour of peril the poop was very properly invaded by all classes of passengers, in all manner of incongruous apparel, in all stages of fear, rage, grief and hysteria; as they made their way among this motley nightmare throng, Norrington took Wormfud by the arm.

"The skipper's a brute," said he, "but he's the right brute in the right place to-night, Wormfud!"

"I hope he may be," was the reply. "But we were off our course this afternoon; and we were off it again during the concert, as sure as we're not on it now."

"I noticed as much myself. No doubt he has good reason for it. I'm just as certain of it as I'm certain that we've a cargo aboard which none of us is supposed to know anything about."

The latter piece of gossip was, indeed, all over the ship; but this allusion to it struck Wormfud as foolishly irrelevant and frivolous. Norrington suggested that the officers would have had more to say about it than Wormfud, if there had been anything in it.

"Officers be damned!" cried the consumptive, with a sound man's vigor. "They're ordinary seamen dressed up; I don't believe they've a second mate's certificate between them, and they're frightened out of their souls."

"Well, anyhow, the skipper isn't that and I myself am here. I have been a commodore in His Majesty's service and I do not flee in the face of danger."

"No; he's drunk; he can shout straight, but you should hear him try to speak."

Norrington made his way aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism," was his private comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that Norrington found those he sought standing almost unconcernedly beside the binnacle.

His little friend was, indeed, pale enough, and her eyes great with dismay; but she stood splendidly calm, in her travelling cloak and bonnet, and with all his soul he hailed the hardihood with which he had rightly credited my love. Yes! He loved her then. It had come home to him at last, and he no longer denied it in his heart. In his innocence and his joy he rather blessed the fire for showing him her true self; and there he stood, loving her openly with his eyes (not to lose another instant), and bursting to tell her so with his lips.

But there also stood Senhor Santos, almost precisely as Norrington had seen him last, cigarette, tie-pin, and all. He wore an overcoat, however, and leaned upon a massive ebony cane, while he carried his daughter's guitar in its case, exactly as though they were waiting for a train. Moreover, Norrignton thought that for the first time he was being regarded by Santos with no very favoring glance.

"You don't think it serious?" Norrington asked him abruptly, his heart still bounding with the most incongruous joy.

Santos gave him his ambiguous shrug; and then, "A fire at sea is surely sirrious," said he.

"Where did it break out?"

"No one knows; it may have come of your concert."

"But they are getting the better of it?"

"They are working wonders so far, senhor."

"You see, Miss Denison," Norrington continued ecstatically, "our rough old diamond of a skipper is the right man in the right place after all. A tight man in a tight place, eh?"

"Senhor Norrignton is right," said Santos, " But you must never spik against Captain 'Arrees again, menma."

"I never will," the poor child said; yet Norrington saw her wince whenever the captain raised that hoarse voice of his in more and more blasphemous exhortation; and Norrignton began to fear with Wormfud that the man was drunk.

Norrington's eyes were still upon his darling, devouring her, revelling in her, when suddenly he saw her hand twitch within her step-father's arm. It was an answering start to one on Santos' part. The cigarette was snatched from his lips. There was a commotion forward, and a cry came aft, from mouth to mouth:

"The flames! The flames!"

Norrignton turned, and caught their reflection on the white column of smoke and steam. He ran forward, and saw them curling and leaping in the hell-mouth of the hold.

The quarter-deck now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door in its midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being ceaselessly worked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung flat into the furnace one after another. These did more good than the pure water: the pillar of smoke became blacker, denser: they were at a crisis; a sudden hush denoted it; even the hoarse skipper stood dumb.

Norrington had rushed down into the waist of the ship—blushing for his delay—and already he was tossing blankets with the rest. Looking up in an enforced pause, he saw Santos whispering in the skipper's ear, with the expression of a sphinx but no lack of foreign gesticulation—behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces, parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as any in that wild, strange scene. One was the luckless lucky digger, the other a gigantic Zambesi , who for days had been told off to watch him; this was the servant (or rather the slave) of Senhor Santos.

The digger planted himself before the captain. His face was reddened by a fire as consuming as that within the bowels of the gallant ship. He had a huge, unwieldy bundle under either arm.

"Plain question—plain answer," Norrignton heard him stutter. "Is there any —— chance of saving this —— ship?"

His adjectives were too foul for print; they were given with such a special effort at distinctness, however, that Norrignton was smiling one instant, and giving thanks the next that Eva Denison had not come forward with her guardian. Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged a glance with Senhor Santos, and all felt that he was going to tell them the truth.

He told it in two words—"Very little."

Then the first individual tragedy was enacted before every eye. With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The Zambesi was at his heels—he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing shriek, the madman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles preceded him; the other dropped like a cannon-ball on the deck.

The Zambesi caught it up and carried it forward to the captain.

Harris held up his hand. All were still before they had fairly found their tongues. His words did run together a little, but he was not drunk.

"Men and women," said he, "what I told that poor devil is Gospel truth; but I didn't tell him we'd no chance of saving our lives, did I? Not me, because we have! Keep your heads and listen to me. There's two good boats on the davits amidships; the chief will take one, the second officer the other; and there ain't no reason why every blessed one of you shouldn't sleep in New Amsterdam to-morrow night. As for me, let me see every soul off of my ship and perhaps I may follow; but by the God that made you, look alive! Mr. Arnott—Mr. McClellan—man them boats and lower away. You can't get quit o' the ship too soon, an' I don't mind tellin' you why. I'll tell you the worst, an' then you'll know. There's been a lot o' gossip goin', gossip about my cargo. I give out as I'd none but ship's stores and ballast, an' I give out a lie. I don't mind tellin' you now. I give out a cussed lie, but I give it out for the good o' the ship! What was the use o' frightenin' folks? But where's the sense in keepin' it back now? We have a bit of a cargo," shouted Harris; "and it's gunpowder—every damned ton of it!"

The effect of this announcement may be imagined; my hand has not the cunning to reproduce it on paper; and if it had, it would shrink from the task. Mild men became brutes, brutal men, devils, women—God help them!—shrieking beldams for the most part. Never shall Norrington forget them with their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths, and the cruel ascending fire glinting on their starting eyeballs!

Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror. Upon these turned Captain Harris, stemming the torrent of maddened humanity.

"For'ard with ye!" yelled the skipper. "The powder's underneath you in the lazarette!"

They were gone like hunted sheep. And now abaft the flaming hatchway there were only the four surviving saloon passengers, the captain, his steward, the Zambesi , and the quarter-master at the wheel. The steward and the Zambesi Norrington observed putting stores aboard the captain's gig as it overhung the water from the stern davits.

"Now, gentlemen," said Harris to Norrignton and Senhor Santos, "I must trouble you to step forward with the rest. Senhor Santos insists on taking his chance along with the young lady in my gig. I've told him the risk, but he insists, and the gig'll hold no more."

"But she must have a crew, and I can row." stated Norrington fiercely; for Eva Denison sat weeping in her deck chair, and his heart bled faint at the thought of leaving her, he who loved her so, and might die without ever telling her his love! Harris, however, stood firm.

"There's that quartermaster and my steward, and Jose the Zambesi," said he. "That's quite enough, Mr. Norrington, for I ain't above an oar myself; but, by God, I'm skipper o' this here ship, and I'll skip her as long as I remain aboard!"

Norrignton saw his hand go to his belt and saw the pistols stuck there for mutineers. He looked at Santos. He answered Norrington with his neutral shrug, and he struck a match and lit a cigarette in that hour of life and death! Then last Norrignton looked at Wormfud; and he leant invertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from his exertions in regaining the poop, a dying man once more. Norrington pointed out his piteous state.

"At least," He whispered, "you won't refuse to take him?"

"Will there be anything to take?" said the captain brutally.

Santos advanced leisurely, and puffed his cigarette over the poor wasted and exhausted frame.

"It is for you to decide, captain," said he cynically; "but this one will make no deeference. Yes, I would take him. It will not be far," he added, in a tone that was not the less detestable for being lowered.

"Take them both!" moaned little Eva, putting in her first and last sweet word.

"Then we all drown, Evasinha," said her stepfather. "It is impossible."

"We're too many for her as it is," said the captain. "So for'ard with ye, Mr. Norrington, before it's too late."

But his darling's brave word for him had fired his blood, and he turned with equal resolution on Harris and on the Portuguese. "I will go like a lamb," said he, "if you will first give me five minutes' conversation with Miss Denison. Otherwise I do not go; and as for the gig, you may take me or leave me, as you choose."

"What have you to say to her?" asked Santos, coming up to Norrington, and again lowering his voice.

Norrignton lowered his still more. "That I love her!" he answered in a soft ecstasy. "That she may remember how I loved her, if I die!"

Santos' shoulders shrugged a cynical acquiescence.

"By all mins, senhor; there is no harm in that."

Norrignton was at her side before another word could pass his withered lips.

"Miss Denison, will you grant me five minutes', conversation? It may be the last that we shall ever have together!"

Uncovering her face, she looked at him with a strange terror in her great eyes; then with a questioning light that was yet more strange, for in it there was a wistfulness he could not comprehend. She suffered him to take her hand, however, and to lead her unresisting to the weather rail.

"What is it you have to say?" she asked him in her turn. "What is it that you—think?"

Her voice fell as though she must have the truth.

"That we have all a very good chance," said he heartily.

"Is that all?" cried Eva, and Norrington's heart sank at her eager manner.

She seemed at once disappointed and relieved. Could it be possible she dreaded a declaration which she had foreseen all along? Norrignton's evil first experience rose up to warn him. No, he would not speak now; it was no time. If she loved him, it might make her love him less; better to trust to God to spare them both.

"Yes, it is all," he said doggedly.

She drew a little nearer, hesitating. It was as though her disappointment had gained on her relief.

"Do you know what I thought you were going to say?"

"No, indeed."

"Dare I tell you?"

"You can trust me."

Her pale lips parted. Her great eyes shone. Another instant, and she had told him that which he would have given all but life itself to know. But in that tick of time a quick step came behind, and the light went out of the sweet face upturned to his.

"I cannot! I must not! Here is—that man!"

Senhor Santos was all smiles and rings of pale-blue smoke.

"You will be cut off, friend Norrington," said he. "The fire is spreading."

"Let it spread!" he cried, gazing his very soul into the young girl's eyes. "We have not finished our conversation.

"We have!" said she, with sudden decision. "Go—go—for my sake—for your own sake—go at once!"

She gave Norrignton her hand. He merely clasped it. And so he left her at the rail-ah, heaven! how often they had argued on that very spot! So he left her, with the greatest effort of all his life (but one); and yet in passing, full as his heart was of love and self, he could not but lay a hand on poor Wormfud's shoulders.

"God bless you, old boy!" he said to him.

He turned a white face that gave Norrington half an instant's pause.

"It's all over with me this time," he said. "But, I say, we was right about the cargo?"

And Norrington heard a chuckle as he reached the ladder; but Wormfud was no longer in his mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as he stood aghast on the top-most rung.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER III. TO THE WATER'S EDGE **

It was not the new panic amidships that froze his marrow; it was not that the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot out those who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cart shoots a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-load struggling, floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and which of us is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; for Norrington saw all this across an impassable gulf of fire.

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard of the flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to the lips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out and up.

Could he jump it there? He sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity. He drew back instantly, less because his heart failed him than because his common sense did not.

Some were watching him, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!" they screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" Norrington held up his hand in token that he heard and understood and meant to act. And as he did their bidding he noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was not; they had lost their northerly trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a dead calm.

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before Norrington dared to move an inch. Then he boldly tried it on his hands and knees, but the scorched bulwarks burned him to the bone. And then he leapt up, his lion heart roaring inside of him; and, with his tortured hands spread wide to balance him, he walked those few yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea and rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by God's grace without mishap.

There was no time to think twice about his feat, or, indeed, about anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more pregnant than the last. And yet he did think that those who had encouraged him to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed him alive among them; they were looking at something else already; and this was what it was.

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare all saw him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harris appeared to threaten him. What he said they could not hear for the deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But they saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flung next instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn, fired without effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Next instant a smooth black cane was raining blow after blow on the man's head. He dropped; the blows fell thick and heavy as before. He lay wriggling; the Portuguese struck and struck until he lay quite still; then they saw Joaquin Santos kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the still thing's clothes, as a man might wipe his boots.

Curses burst from all who witnessed; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as I say, had they time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. This last had begun and ended in the same minute; in another they were at the starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat.

She lay safely on the water: how they thanked the gods for that! Lower and lower sank her gunwale as they dropped aboard her, with no more care than the Gadarene swine whose fate they courted. Discipline, order, method, common care, Norrington brought all of these things with him from the floating furnace; but all others fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the bottom of the long-boat they fought again.

And yet she held them all! All, that is, but a terror-stricken few, who lay along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or three more whom were left fatally hesitating in the forechains: all but the selfish savages who had been the first to perish in the pinnace, and one distracted couple who had thrown their children into the kindly ocean, and jumped in after them out of their torment, locked for ever in each other's arms.

Yes! Norrington saw more things on that starry night, by that blood-red glare, than I have told you in their order, and more things than I shall tell you now. Blind would he gladly be for his few remaining years, if that night's horrors could be washed from his eyes for ever.

In the long-boat they cannot have been less than thirty; the exact number no man will ever know. But they shoved off without mischance; the chief mate had the tiller; the third mate the boat-hook; and six or eight oars were at work, in a fashion, as they plunged among the great smooth sickening mounds and valleys of fathomless ink.

Scarcely were they clear when the foremast dropped down on the fastenings, dashing the jib-boom into the water with its load of demented human beings. The mainmast followed by the board before they had doubled their distance from the wreck. Both trailed to port, where they could not see them; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary grandeur, her flapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so that they were stamped very sharply upon the black and starry sky. But the whole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and horror. The fire now filled the entire waist of the vessel, and the noise of it was as the rumble and roar of a volcano. As for the light, I declare that it put many a star clean out, and dimmed the radiance of all the rest, as it flooded the sea for miles around, and a sea of molten glass reflected it.

In their unspeakable gladness at being quit of the ship, some minutes passed before they discovered that the long-boat was slowly filling. The water was at their ankles before Norrington cried out, so fast were their eyes to the poor lost Lady Jermyn. Then all at once the ghastly fact dawned upon them; and it was the mate himself who burst out crying like a child. Norrington kicked off his shoes and was busy baling with them. Others were hunting for the leak. But the mischief was as subtle as it was mortal—as though a plank had started from end to end. Within and without the waters rose equally—then lay an instant level with the gunwales—then swamped them, oh! so slowly, that they thought they were never going to sink. It was like getting inch by inch into your tub. "It's coming! O Christ!" muttered one as it came; to Norrington it was a downright relief to be carried under at last.

But then, thank God, Norrington had always been a strong swimmer. The water was warm and buoyant, and he came up like a cork, as he knew he should. He shook the drops from his face, and there were the sweet stars once more; for many an eye they had gone out for ever; and there the burning wreck.

In a little an oar floated Norrington's way: he threw his arms across it and gripped it with his chin as he swam. It relieved him greatly. Up and down he rode among the oily black hillocks; He was down when there was a sudden flare as though the sun had risen, and he saw still a few heads bobbing and a few arms waving frantically around him. At the same instant a terrific detonation split the ears; and when he rose on the next bald billow, where the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but a red-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then left a blackness through which every star shone with redoubled brilliance.

And now right and left splashed falling missiles; a new source of danger or of temporary respite; to Norrington, by a merciful Providence, it proved the latter.

Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash right in front of him. A few more yards, and his brains had floated with the spume. As it was, the oar was dashed from under his armpits; in another moment they had found a more solid resting-place.

It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In this calm it might float for days. Norrington climbed upon the bars-and the whole cage rolled over on top of him.

Coming to the surface, he found to his joy that the hen-coop had righted itself; so now he climbed up again, but this time very slowly and gingerly; the balance was undisturbed, and he stretched himself cautiously along the bars on his stomach. A good idea immediately occurred to him. He had jumped as a matter of course into the flannels which one naturally wears in the tropics. To their lightness he already owed his life, but the common cricket-belt which was part of the costume was the thing to which he owes it most of all. Loosening this belt a little, as he tucked his toes tenaciously under the endmost bar, he undid and passed the two ends under one of the middle bars, fastening the clasp upon the other side. If he capsized now, well, they might go to the locker together; otherwise the hen-coop and he should not part company in a hurry; and he thought, he felt, that she would float.

Worn out as he was, and comparatively secure for the moment, his eyes closed, and every fiber rested, as he rose and slid with the smooth, long swell. Whether he did indeed hear voices, curses, cries, he cannot say positively to this day. And he thought he saw first a tiny flame, and then a tinier glow; and as his head drooped, and his eyes closed again, he thought he smelt tobacco; but this, of course, was his imagination supplying all the links from one.

**CHAPTER IV. THE SILENT SEA **

The hen-coop was some six feet long, by eighteen or twenty inches in breadth and depth. It was simply a long box with bars in lieu of a lid; but it was very strongly built.

Norrington recognized it as one of two which had stood lashed against either rail of the Lady Jermyn's poop; there the bars had risen at right angles to the deck; now they lay horizontal, a gridiron six feet long-and my bed. And as each particular bar left its own stripe across his wearied body, and yet its own comfort in his quivering heart, another day broke over the face of the waters, and over Norrington.

Discipline was what Norrington had to clung to, and had been the very first thing to perish aboard the ill-starred ship; the officers were not much better than poor landlubbers, and little had been done in true ship-shape style all night. All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seized them; not a bell had been struck from first to last; and Norrington was disgusted. Had he been captain, Nay! Had he been even first mate! Nothing so traumatic would have occurred.

The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up.

And oh! the awful glory of that sunrise! It was terrific; it was sickening; Norrington's senses swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister, without a crest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as he rose; an oily grave among them as he fell.

Norrington fell to wondering. How deep was it? Not that it makes any difference whether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand, whether you fall from a balloon or from the attic window. But the greater depth or distance is the worse to contemplate; and he was as a man hanging by his hands so high above the world, that his dangling feet cover countries, continents; a man who must fall very soon, and wonders how long he will be falling, falling; and how far his soul will bear his body company.

He shook himself from his reverie. Discipline. That is what he lacked that is what he needed now. He squinted at the sun, by his last reckoning they were more or less twelve leagues off course. He grabbed at a piece of wood flotsam and started paddling in what he reckoned as northward.

Ah! how he thought of her as that cruel day's most cruel sun climbed higher and higher in the flawless flaming vault. Why was he so undesirable? He had power money and a title, he was not ugly. What made a poor blacksmith a better choice for husband? Elizabeth. No, he had replaced her. Eva Denison! He hated himself for having fallen back to his old reveries regarding Elizabeth; for what questions were being answered? He must move on. Eva was health. Eva would accept him, even in his present fallen state. But where is she?

She was saved in the gig. Sweet Jesus, thanks for that! But Norrington—he was dying a lingering death in mid-ocean; she would never know how he loved her, Norrington, who could only lecture her when he had her at his side.

Death? No—no—not yet! He must live—live—live—to tell his darling how he had loved her all the time. So he forced himself from his lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought was a perpetual spur henceforth until the end.

From this onward, while his sense stood by him, he was practical, resourceful, alert. It was now high-noon, and he had eaten nothing since dinner the night before. How clearly he saw the long saloon table, only laid, however, abaft the mast; the glittering glass, the cool white napery, the poor old dried dessert in the green dishes! Earlier, this had occupied his mind an hour; now he dismissed it in a moment; there was Eva, he must live for her; there must be ways of living at least a day or two without sustenance, and he must think of them.

So he undid that belt of his which fastened him to his gridiron, and he straddled his craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which he never once had thought until now. Then he tightened the belt about his hollow body, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour he had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was over now, and he sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Of course he saw none. They had been too far off course. Then, though his present valiant mood might ignore the adverse chances, they were as one hundred to a single chance of deliverance. The ship's burning had brought no ship to their succor; and how should Norrington, a mere speck amid the waves, bring one now?

Moreover, he was all but motionless; he was barely drifting at all. This he saw from a few objects which were floating around him now at noon; they had been with him when the high sun rose. One was the very oar which had been his first support; another was a sailor's cap; but another, which floated nearer, was new to him, as though it had come to the surface while his eyes were turned inwards. And this was clearly the case; for the thing was a drowned and bloated corpse.

Norrington thought he recognized the man's back. He fancied it was the mate who had taken charge of the long-boat. Was Norrington then the single survivor of those thirty souls? He was still watching his poor lost comrade, when that happened to him against which even Norrignton was not proof. Through the deep translucent blue beneath him a slim shape glided; three smaller fish led the way; they dallied an instant a fathom under his feet, which were snatched up, with what haste you may imagine; then on they went to surer prey.

The body turned over; his dreadful face stared upwards; it was the chief officer, sure enough. Then he clove the water with a rush, his dead hand waved, the last of him to disappear; and Norrington had a new horror to think over. The mate's poor fingers were all broken and beaten to a pulp the damage beyond what a mere fist could inflict.

The voices of the night came back to Norrington—the curses and the cries. In his memory he recognized the voice of the chief mate. He thought of Santos and his horrible heavy cane. Good God! She was in the power of that! He must live for Eva indeed; must save himself to save and protect his innocent and helpless girl.

Again he was a man with a purpose; stronger than ever was the stimulus now, louder than ever the call on every drop of true man's blood in his perishing frame. It should not perish! It should not!

Yet his throat was parched; his lips were caked; his frame was hollow. Very weak he was already; without sustenance he should surely die. But as yet he was far enough from death, or he had done disdaining the means of life that all this time lay ready to his hand. He thought of _the Endeavour_, the ship he had recently lost in a storm chasing that most odious of pirates, Jack Sparrow. It seemed shipwreck and misfortune is his lot in life. But was it his misfortune to meet Miss Denison? She was safe in that longboat, if he could just keep his discipline. He began to row twice as hard.

**CHAPTER V. MY REWARD **

The sun declined; his shadow broadened on dark waters; and now he felt that if his cockle-shell could live a little longer, why, so could he.

All is reaction in the heart of man; light follows darkness nowhere more surely than in that hidden self, and now at sunset it was his heart's high-noon. Deep peace pervaded him as he lay outstretched on his narrow rocking bed, as it might be in his coffin; a trust in the Maker's will to save him if that were for the best, a trust in His final wisdom and loving-kindness, even though this night should be Norrington's last on earth. Such was his sunset mood; it lasted a few minutes, and then, without radically changing, it became more objective.

The west was a broadening blaze of yellow and purple and red. A petrel wheeled somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took Norrignton's thoughts off at an earthy tangent. He thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. He muttered to himself.

"Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink."

That, of course, came first (incorrectly); and it reminded him of his thirst. Now he had a new occupation, saying to himself all the poetry he could remember, especially that of the sea; for he was a bookish fellow.

"We extort, we pilfer, we filch, and sack,  
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho.  
Maraud and embezzle, and even high-jack,  
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho."

He moodily kicked at the water and let his thoughts wander into a dark abyss.

At last he fell into a deep sleep, a long unconscious holiday of the soul, undefiled by any dream.

Hours passed.

He slept into delirium.

It came in bits.

He was a child. He was playing on the lawn at home. He was back on the blazing sea.

He was a schoolboy saying his Ovid; then back once more.

The hen-coop was the Lady Jermyn. He was at Eva Denison's side. They were being married on board. The ship's bell was ringing for them; a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under a sparrow's claws; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship; smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame filled the universe; the sea dried up, and he was left lying in its bed, lying in his coffin, with red-hot teeth, because the sun blazed right above them, and his withered lips were drawn back from them forever.

So once more he came back to his living death; too weak now to carry a finger to the salt water and back to his mouth; too weak to think of Eva. Or Elizabeth. Too weak to pray any longer for the end, to trouble or to care any more.

Only so tired.

His floating coffin was many things in turn; a railway carriage, a pleasure boat on the Thames, a hammock under the trees; last of all it was the upper berth in a not very sweet-smelling cabin, with a clatter of knives and forks near at hand, and a very strong odor of onions in the Irish stew.

His hand crawled to his head; both felt a wondrous weight; and his head was covered with bristles no longer than those on his chin, only less stubborn.

"Where am I?" Norrignton feebly asked.

The knives and forks clattered on, and presently he burst out shouting because they had not heard him. Well, they heard his shouts, and a huge fellow came with his mouth full, and smelling like a pickle bottle.

"Where am I?"

"Aboard the brig Eliza, Liverpool, bound for New Amsterdam; glad to see them eyes open."

"Have I been here long?"

"Matter o' ten days."

"Where did you find me?"

"Floating in a hen-coop; thought you was a dead 'un."

"Do you know what ship?"

"Do we know? No, that's what you've got to tell us!"

"I can't," he sighed, too weak to wag his head upon the pillow.

The man went to the cabin door.

"Here's a go," said he; "forgotten the name of his blessed ship, he has. Where's that there paper, Mr. Bowles? There's just a chance it may be the same."

"I've got it, sir."

"Well, fetch it along, and come you in, Mr. Bowles; likely you may think o' somethin'."

A reddish, hook-nosed man, with a jaunty, wicked look, came and smiled upon Norrington in the friendliest fashion; the smell of onions became more than he knew how to endure.

"Ever hear of the ship Lady Jermyn?" asked the first corner, winking at the other.

Norrington thought very hard, the name did sound familiar; but no, he could not honestly say that he had heard it before.

The captain looked at his mate.

"It was a thousand to one," said he; "still we may as well try him with the other names. Ever heard of Cap'n Harris, mister?"

"Not that I know of."

"Of Saunderson-stooard?"

"No."

"Or Crookes-quartermaster."

"Never."

"Nor yet of Wormfud—a passenger?"

"No."

"It's no use goin' on," said the captain folding up the paper.

"None whatever, sir," said the mate

"Wormfud! Wormfud!" Norrington repeated. "I do seem to have heard that name before. Won't you give me another chance?"

The paper was unfolded with a shrug.

"There was another passenger of the name of San-Santos. Dutchman, seemin'ly. Ever heard o' him?"

Norrington's disappointment was keen. He could not say that he had. Yet he would not swear that he had not.

"Oh, won't you? Well, there's only one more chance. Ever heard of Miss Eva Denison—"

"By God, yes! Have you?"

Norrington was sitting bolt upright in a bunk. The skipper's beard dropped upon his chest.

"Bless my soul! The last name o' the lot, too!"

"Have you heard of her?" Norrington reiterated.

"Wait a bit, my lad! Not so fast. Lie down again and tell me who she was."

"Who she was?" he shouted. "I want to know where she is!"

"I can't hardly say," said the captain awkwardly. "We found the gig o' the Lady Jermyn the week arter we found you, bein' becalmed like; there wasn't no lady aboard her, though."

"Was there anybody?"

"Two dead 'uns—an' this here paper."

"Let me see it!"

The skipper hesitated.

"Hadn't you better wait a bit?"

"No, no; for Christ's sake let me see the worst; do you think I can't read it in your face?"

He could—he did. Norrington made that plain to them, and at last he had the paper smoothed out upon his knees. It was a short statement of the last sufferings of those who had escaped in the gig, and there was nothing in it that he did not now expect. They had buried Wormfud first—then his darling, Eva—then her step-father. The rest expected to follow fast enough. It was all written plainly, on a sheet of the log-book, in different trembling hands. Captain Harris had gone next; and two had been discovered dead.

How long he studied that bit of crumpled paper, with the salt spray still sparkling on it faintly, God alone knows. All at once a peal of nightmare laughter rattled through the cabin. My deliverers started back. The laugh was Norrington's.


End file.
